"In 2005 the landmark case of Capitol v. Naxos pitted a distributor of 1930s foreign classical recordings (Naxos) against the putative holder of the U.S. rights to those recordings. The judges of the New York State Court of Appeals ruled against Naxos, but they used the opportunity to go much further than that. They declared that since New York State had not passed explicit statutes dealing with recording copyright, it was in fact governed by “common law” (i.e., law declared by judges in their rulings). In their opinion sound recording copyright in New York derived from the laws of seventeenth-century English kings. It was absolute and perpetual. The rights holders have all rights, forever, and the public has none." (Capitol Records, Inc., v. Naxos of America, Inc., 830 N.E. 2d 250 (N.Y. App. 2005).)
See: https://recordingcopyright.org/pdf/AMuscop_fnl.pdf
Therefore, it is illegal to copy and distribute an old recording of Rhapsody in Blue if the recording was made in the US.